Are you someone who is interested in making money from digital portrait photography without the added & expensive costs of running a studio?

 Enter your Name & Email below to receive your instantly down loadable 35-page free report. Your email privacy is always respected.

 A no-non sense behind the scenes look at how to make profit from Digital Portrait Photography working from home.

You will learn how to operate a successful & thriving business from home.

Whether you are a beginner, experienced, part or full-time photographer, this report will unlock the secrets to profitable portrait photography.

You will learn:

• how to start a home portrait studio business
• outdoor photography tips
• portraiture photography
• what camera, lens, computer, software you require
• lighting on-location with minimal of equipment
• how to use available ambient light
• off-camera flash techniques
• how to capture great portraits on-location
• learn work flow for shooting as well as post-processing
• online & offline marketing
  
• and much much more….

Are you fed up of paying eye-watering prices for sub-standard photography training? Are you looking to start a profitable home-based portrait photography business with minimal overheads & running costs or wish to take your existing business to the next level? A workshop unlike others where you will get great content & tuition at great value for your money. Being tutored by not one, not two, but three top  photography trainers. This is a workshop you cannot afford to miss out on!

This is a 2-day practical photography workshop presented by Martin Grahame-Dunn, Kevin Wilson & Uzair Kharawala. You will get some of the best photography training over 2 days on subjects like posing, composition, lighting, off-camera flash, work flow, editing, simple post-processing, business marketing and much much more….

PHOTOGRAPHY

This practical workshop includes everything you need to learn about photographing portraits on-location.

The workshop will cover topics such as:

– shooting with ambient light

– shooting with window light

COURSE CONTENT

DAY 1

Price
£150.00 + VAT

What is included:
– Models on Day 1

– Tea / Coffee throughout

– Lunch on Day 2

Photography on Day 1
You will photograph 3 different models which you can use for building for portfolio.

– Model 1 : Retro Portraits

– Model 2: Lifestyle Portraits

– Model 3: Elegance Portraits

When & Where

Hotels
There are a variety of good quality & low-cost hotels around Leamington. Here are a couple:

Our Sponsors

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our sponsors for the tremendous support in helping us put this event. Delegates will get some very special & exclusive offers which will save £££.

Save 25% of any Loxley product.

Save £100.00 off the full onOne Perfect Photo Suite 5.5

Save 25% off the full price of £60 +VAT

About the Presenters

Martin Grahame-Dunn

Martin has been in the industry for over 30 years covering many aspects of Professional Photography including Industrial, Commercial, Automotive, Advertising, Fashion, Editorial, Wedding photography & Portraiture.

Over almost the entire period of his professional career he has been actively engaged in the training of photographers from the four corners of the world covering every major discipline. A highly respected trainer and judge with so many Professional Organisations, the Fuji Professional School of Photography, the Kodak European Gold Circle and many of the worlds leading representative bodies.

Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson honed his photographic skills to encompass the current trends demanded by buyers of wedding and portrait photography today. The foundation of good photography is based on lighting and composition, this coupled with available light and the use of various reflectors and diffusers is where Kevin has developed his own style and brand of classical work with a contemporary twist.

Kevin, is the only photographer to achieve multiple fellowships, in portrait and wedding, all with natural light, both with the Master Photographers Association and the British Institute of Professional Photography. In total he has 7, plus PPOA Mcr.

Uzair Kharawala

A relative new comer and the new kid on the block! Uzair has established himself as a skilled photographer and an astute businessman. He is the creator of the award-winning software Foto SF , the founder of this blog, various DVDs on off-camera flash which have been sold in over 27 countries to date.

He is currently one of Nikon UK’s ‘Evangelist’ and is a regular ‘Guest Speaker’ at major photography conventions, trade shows & fairs in the UK. He regularly presents seminars & workshops for Calumet, at Apple’s flagship store in Regent Street London, Focus on Imaging, PhotoVision Roadshows and has previously presented for all major photographic bodies including the BIPP, MPA & the SWPP.

The Nikon D3100 cashback offer will run from 1st December 2010 until 31st January 2011 (inclusive) for customers in the UK and Republic of Ireland, and claims must be received by 28th February 2011 (inclusive).

The Nikon D3100 is the most easy-to-use D-SLR to date, offering a range of high performance features that are designed to make taking quality images fun and easy. The camera’s Guide mode gives you step-by-step instructions of how to change the camera settings, so you not only get the picture you want but it helps you to understand how it was achieved so you can develop your photography skills. The D3100 is Nikon’s first DSLR to offer full HD movie mode so you can get creative with your photography and switch between shooting stills and video at the click of a button. And, with an HDMI port you can connect your camera to the TV and relive the festivities with friends and family.

Simon Iddon, Product Manager for Enthusiast products, says: “The D3100 is the ideal gift for people wanting to capture festive memories this Christmas and learn how to improve their photography skills. I am delighted that we’re able to introduce this cashback offer on our award-winning model and hope that it will make it even more accessible this season.”

For terms and conditions and information about how to make a claim please visit: www.nikon.co.uk/cashback . Offer subject to availability.

One evening I was watching TV and saw the Fosters advert on which they advertised the Facebook Fan Page rather than their own website. It was something like www.facebook.com/fosters. This intrigued me and I asked myself why are they not advertising their own website but diverting them to a Facebook page. Most big brands are now promoting their Facebook Fan Page rather then their website! Do you get a strong message that something is changing on the web.

The need to leverage social media for business is a complete no-brainer. If Facebook was a country, it will be the third largest country in the world (population wise) with over 600 million. This figure is growing at warp speed on a minute-by-minute basis.

On average, each one of us spends about 51 minutes per day on Facebook. CNN recently reported that Facebook traffic has overtaken Google for the 1st time ever. This is huge.

Why is Facebook important to a small business or any size of business ? Well, with such a massive audience spending so much time on Facebook, it would be foolish not to put our brand in front of the audience. It is easy to build relationships with your prospects. The other most important factor is FREE TRAFFIC a website can receive from FB. I have realised the potential of it and using it to bring more traffic to my website/s and also building relationships with prospects / customers.

I check my Google Analytics stats pretty much on a daily basis to see how much traffic I get to my site/s. One day I noticed this:

I was pretty amazed and pleasantly surprised. Facebook directing so much free traffic to my website. It was at this point I realised the power of Facebook. I had not done anything special. This was just from my personal account. I did not even have a Facebook Fan Page! I soon created a Fan Page and am now actively using Facebook as one of the social media tools for free traffic. You can see Twitter is also one of the top traffic sources for my website.

The above image is the Welcome page for our Facebook Fan Page. The URL for this page is:

www.facebook.com/sfphotoschool

This page now brings in regular & daily traffic to our website. Please do visit and ‘LIKE’ our page. This is just another platform to put the message across and build our brand on the web.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and opened up your eyes to the power of Facebook. If you have a fan page and would like to share your experience with others, please pen in your comments in the box below. I would love to hear from you.

SPECIAL FACEBOOK FAN PAGE CHRISTMAS OFFER

Our sister website Search SF has this money saving offer for you. We’ll create a brand new Facebook Fanpage for you for only £175 + VAT (normal price £245 + VAT). Saving you £70.00. This is offer is for a limited time time and expires on 24 Dec 2010.

Your Facebook fan page will be set up for getting new leads for your business on a daily basis and will compliment your website. You’ll also learn how to use Facebook & email marketing to build a strong & profitable relationship with your prospects & customers.

You cannot afford to miss out on this great offer.  Contact us now on 01525 383683 or by email on info@sfdigital.co.uk and see how you can realise the power of Facebook for your business.

To Your Success

Oz

Black Friday promotion starts at 12:00 AM Friday November 26th CST (-6 GMT) and will run until 11:59PM CST (-6 GMT) 26 Nov 2010.

Click on the banner below and go straight to their website.

But hurry, it is on a first come first served basis. Sale starts 1200 hrs CST.

This has got to be one of the craziest & coolest deals in web hosting. It’ll be worth setting your alarm clocks for!

Crazy Deals include:

Shared Hosting – $4.95/month AS LOW AS $0.99/month
VPS Hosting – $19.95/month AS LOW AS $3.99 First Month
Dedicated Servers – $174/month AS LOW AS $34.80 First Month
and many many more deals…

Remember this offer is only running for 1 DAY on Black Friday . Don’t miss out on this incredible Black Friday offer.

Every web hosting plan comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and is fully guaranteed by the owner himself. If you ever have a problem with the regular support, just ask that your ticket be assigned to Brent and he will personally take the time to give you the VIP attention that you deserve.

Oz

Whats new in Perfect Photo Suite 5.5

New in Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 is the next generation of Genuine Fractals now called Perfect Resize, with improved resizing controls and gallery wrap feature, new resizing algorithm, and more. Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 also features the all new Perfect Layers for adding a layered workflow for Lightroom and Aperture, and exciting new effects and frames in PhotoTools and PhotoFrame.

All of the products in the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 will work as plug-ins for Photoshop, Lightroom, and Aperture. But now, for the first time, five of the seven products in the Perfect Photo Suite will work as standalone applications, giving you the ultimate work-flow flexibility. Only PhotoTools and Mask Pro will require Photoshop.

American Photo Magazine awarded the Perfect Photo Suite their Editor’s Choice award for Top Image Editing Software and the professional photographers who read Studio Photography voted the Perfect Photo Suite the best plug-in for Adobe Photoshop in their Reader’s Choice Awards.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW – USE THE DISCOUNT CODE SFDGPS

Press Releases on the other hand, allow the business owner to write short, compelling pieces directly about their business activities and present them to the media.

Online, there are dozens of FREE web services dedicated to the collection and distribution of Press Releases, which are in turn picked up and displayed on other, related web sites via RSS or News Feeds. Depending upon the news worthiness of the Press Release, it’s not uncommon to find them picked up by the media as filler material, which adds instant credibility to your online business!

The Automated Traffic Bot makes writing and submitting press releases easier than ever before.

Automatically Submit Your Press Release To 15 Syndication Sites – This will send out your press release to the key sites that will automatically spread ‘the word’ about your business or website in under 24 hours!

Complete AUTO ACCOUNT Creation – The sites that you will send your press release to will require you to create an account first, this can be time consuming, but the automated traffic bot will do all this for you*

(*Note: All you will need to do is confirm the registration by clicking a link in your email)

Unlimited Account Profiles – Now you can add as many account profiles as you wish meaning you can have MULTIPLE Accounts on all the syndication sites to really give you more exposure

Unlimited Company Profiles – You can add as many company profiles as you wish too. If you want to have a separate profile for each of your website’s you can, or even run this press release submission service for other people and charge them a fee to distribute their press release for them! – GREAT for Local Business Marketing!

AUTOMATIC CAPTCHA Solving* – To prevent mass spaming of sites many of the sites will require you to input a random ‘captcha’ code, again this can be done manually, but using Automated Traffic Bot’s Captcha solving service (* third party Captcha account req) you never need to input another captcha coder allowing you to submit tons of press releases over and over.

Supports Keywords – Keywords are the KEY to ranking your website and press release in the major search engines. Now you can tailor the press release submission to the EXACT keyword to ensure you get the maximum exposure.

Supports ALL PC Formats – Will work on Windows XP, Windows 7 without any upgrades or annoying additional framework downloads and installs. (sorry there is currently no MAC version available)

 

The important thing is that if the clients get fed up & bored posing for shots after shots, you won’t get the right expressions and you won’t get the results. Its a complete waste of time dragging the session longer just for the sake of it.

Let me share with you these images I shot recently of an engagement portrait session for a couple. I want my clients to enjoy the session and have a bit of fun too at the same time.

We are blessed with some stunning locations & countryside around us, this place is Dunstable Downs and a favourite ‘studio’ of mine. We go around for a walk up the hills and get some fresh air and some photos! All the above images were shot with available light.

I usually don’t carry too much kit around or a heavy camera bag here as you can see it will be hard work walking around with a ton to carry around your shoulders. All you need is a body, couple of lenses and a flash gun.

For the below image, I’ve used a Nikon SB900 flash on a light stand. The lighting is kept simple & basic. One flash on a light stand and fired through a shoot-through umbrella.

The time of the session is critical to get great images. I tend to keep my sessions late in the evening, however, it is not always possible. With diffused & soft lighting all you need is a good sharp lens. For this session, I only used the Nikon 70-200mm lens. Another favourite lens of mine is the 85mm f/1.4 . These two lenses pretty much account for most of my sessions.

I use a Lastolite 80cm Umbrella – Translucent White and this works fine for me. What I would recommend is the Lastolite all-in-one lighting kit. This is portable & light weight. As I said earlier on, I need to be really fast to set up and shoot. It takes me less than 2 minutes to set up a lightstand, Nikon SB900 or SB800 and an umbrella. No wires around me and all works really well. The Lastolite Lighting kit is £82.99p from Warehouse Express .

Now you may wonder how I did the shoot in 30 minutes. Well, please watch the video and see how I took no more than 20 minutes to photograph around 98 images including set up & packing up. This wasn’t a race against time sort of a shoot or with a stop-watch in one hand. We went at a very relaxed pace and once I knew I had the images I needed, I packed up.

Here is a little video of how the session was shot and the kind of images. The session started at 17:33 hrs and the last shot was taken at 17:50 hrs. What you’ll see in this video has been shot in under 17 minutes!

If you enjoyed the above post and would like to learn more, than you’re in luck. As a little thank you for being a visitor to this blog and being a subscriber (preference will be given to those who are on the email list) here is a mini-workshop with a difference and its completely free.

FREE MINI PORTRAIT WORKSHOP

Date: Sun 21 Nov 2010
Time: 1200-1500 hrs
Location: Around Leighton Buzzard

How to Book: Please send an email with the subject ‘Mini Workshop’ and your contact details. Places are strictly limited and is on a first come first book basis. So please send your email as soon as possible to info@sfdigital.co.uk

This is a hands-on mini workshop to help you shoot a portrait session quickly, easily & effortlessly. You will need to bring your partner, wife, husband, or a family member.

First you’ll see me in action taking images using available light & off-camera flash . We’ll then photograph each other rather than models. You’ll experience how it is like to be in front & behind the camera. The only request I make is that the images you’ve shot of other people, you process and forward it to them as a little thank you for their time. This way every one will have some great portraits of themselves and their loved ones created by a variety of photographers in their own creative way.
After the workshop you can contact each other and discuss the sessions as to what you liked, enjoyed & how did the images look, etc. This kind of feedback will help you in improving your shooting & editing work flow. You won’t get this from any other seminar or workshop.

Can you afford to miss out on this ? Best of all its completely free.

I look forward to seeing you soon.

Oz

Hence your mobile site needs to be a much simplified version of your regular website. I use my iPhone quite a lot when travelling on train or at airports for internet access. When I log onto a website which is not ‘mobile optimised’, I log off for the simple reason that I can’t read the information in the right format. Have a look at the BBC website via your phone, the Royal Mail site, you’ll get my message, or perhaps our own SF Photo School website which is optimised for mobile phones. These sites are simple to navigate & are easily readable on the phone.

The stats make very interesting reading. The logins from a mobile handset is on the increase every month. Almost one fifth of internet traffic is now through the mobile phones. Google has its own index for mobile sites. So, if you create a mobile version of your site you stand a significantly higher & better chance of showing up higher in search rankings. With this being  a relatively new index, I would highly recommend that you create a mobile version of your site as your competitiors may not have woken up to this!

You can see that devices like iPad, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, iPod have their own stats in Google analytics now. If you analyise your stats on a regular basis, you’ll see a sharp increase in the number of visitors to your site via the mobile phones if you have a ‘mobile site’.

Need help ?

Need any help in creating a mobile version of your website, our sister site Search SF can help you with a clean & simple theme for your mobile site. For a very limited period only, we are offering ‘mobile websites’ at an incredible price starting from only £125.00 + VAT. Give us a call on 01525 383683 or send an email and find out how.